The Cabinet Office has revealed in an implementation update that its first annual report on the new ICT Strategy will be delayed by two months.

The document will now only be in available May 2012

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The Cabinet Office has revealed in an implementation update that its first annual report on the new ICT Strategy will be delayed by two months.

The document is set to outline how effective central government departments have been in implementing ICT change in line with its latest Strategy, and whether the expected savings have been made.

Although it was due to be released last month, one year after the release of the ICT Strategy, it is now not expected until May.

According to the Cabinet Office's implementation update, more time is needed to "run further integrity checks on metrics and savings data returned from central government departments."

Computerworld UK contacted that Cabinet Office for more detail but was informed that this was all the information that could be provided at present.

Released last March, the Strategy outlined how the government aimed to cut public spending on ICT by "millions of pounds through cutting duplication and waste". Between 2008 and 2009 the public sector spent over £16 billion on ICT.

The Strategy aimed to reduce the cost of using data centres by 35 percent over five years, increase the use of SMEs as suppliers, use more cloud solutions through a government online application store and adopt more open source.

"For too long, government has wasted vast amounts of money on ineffective and duplicate IT systems. We will cut out duplication and wastage by sharing more of our assets across government and using common systems," Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude said at the time.

"We will also end the oligopoly of big business supplying government IT by breaking down contracts into smaller, more flexible projects. This will open up the market to SMEs and new providers."

In other government news, it has been revealed this week that Liam Maxwell, director of ICT futures at the Cabinet Office, has been appointed as the UK government's new deputy CIO.

He fills a role that was left vacant by Bill McCluggage, who announced his resignation as deputy CIO last November, for a move to technology vendor EMC.